Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega has been re-elected by a landslide in an election described by the opposition as the most rigged contest in the four decades since the Sandinista leader first came to power.

As Nicaragua's first couple consolidates power, a daughter fears for her country

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Ortega won a third consecutive term (and fourth in total) with 72.1% of the vote, after 66.3% of polling stations were counted, the electoral board said.

Ortega’s main opponent, the center-right Liberal Constitutionalist party (PLC) candidate Maximino Rodríguez, was a distant second with 14.2% of the vote, the board said.

In protest against what they said was the absence of a fair contest, many among the Independent Liberal party and its allies called for voters to boycott the poll.

Roberto Rivas, the chief of the Supreme Electoral Council, said about 66% of Nicaragua’s 3.8 million registered voters had participated. But the main opposition movement, the Broad Front for Democracy, estimated more than 70% of voters had abstained.

“I don’t think it’s worth voting and wasting time, because it’s already fixed,” Glenda Bendana, an appliance sales executive in a Managua shopping mall, told the Associated Press. “Here they have taken away not our right to vote, but to choose. Ortega wants to die in power and leave his wife to take his place.”

The Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) candidate benefitted from strong economic growth in recent years, largely without the high levels of crime suffered by its Central American neighbours.

Government social programmes have helped reduce poverty by almost 13 percentage points – and cemented popular support among poorer Nicaraguans.

Supporters of Nicaragua’s president Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo wave a Nicaraguan flag and flags of the Sandinista National Liberation Front, or FSLN, while celebrating after preliminary results showed Ortega was on course for re-election. Photograph: Oswaldo Rivas/Reuters

“I’m euphoric, thanking God for this opportunity, this triumph, so the people continue to reap benefits,” said Ana Luisa Báez, 55, told Reuters.

But opposition leaders said the election was flawed because Ortega used his power over the courts to bypass constitutional term limits and prevent his most popular rivals from standing. Several candidates resigned in protest at the skewed number of polling station monitors.

In July, Nicaragua’s Supreme Electoral Council in effect decimated the opposition by ousting Eduardo Montealegre as leader of the main opposition party, the Independent Liberation party (PLI) – and then suspending almost all its members for refusing to recognize a new party leader named as head of the opposition by the supreme court.

Other parties in the coalition had already been stripped of their legal status by judges and electoral officials allegedly controlled by Ortega’s government.

“Ortega gets his way and he doesn’t care if he violates the rights of others,” Rodríguez told Reuters.

“Supposedly he fought against the Somoza dictatorship, and the Sandinistas themselves regard Ortega as worse than Somoza.”

A team of independent observers from the Organisation of American States is due to make a report on the election in six months’ time – too late to affect the outcome.

The US government said it was “deeply concerned” by the electoral process, and accused the FSLN government of sidelining opposition candidates and limiting poll monitors.

“The United States is deeply concerned by the flawed presidential and legislative electoral process in Nicaragua, which precluded the possibility of a free and fair election,” spokesman Mark Toner said in a statement.

The result allows the first couple to push ahead with policies that mix the traditional leftwing values of the FSLN – such as free healthcare and education – with an increasingly pro-business and pro-church stance.

In recent years this has been effective for the economy, which has been growing at an annual rate of nearly 5%, although Nicaragua remains one of the poorest countries in Latin America.

Key questions facing the first couple in the coming term will be whether to push ahead with plans for a Chinese-built and -funded interoceanic canal, how to offset declining financial support from crisis-hit Venezuela, and whether a new US president will support congressional moves to punish Nicaragua for its allegedly undemocratic elections and increasing ties with Russia.

“The lack of Venezuelan support, the international price of oil, the price of our exports and the possibility that (US legislation passes) makes it a more complicated outlook for the Ortega in the next term,” said Oscar Rene Vargas, a sociologist and economist at Central American University.